


a collection of strings

by Joanne_Barcia



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Reality, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-12 22:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5684164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_Barcia/pseuds/Joanne_Barcia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is woken up in a semi-strange living room by a sudden weight settling on his legs, and all at once, he opens his eyes and sits up to find a little girl giggling on his lap.  A stuffed elephant tucked under her right arm, she smiles from ear to ear.</p><p>“Uncle Fox!” she says, elongating his name into a simple, two-toned song.  “Tell me a story!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	a collection of strings

**Author's Note:**

> Some people like to finish their stories before they post them. Sadly, I am not one of these people. I am literal trash who updates whenever, so sorry in advance. This is my first multi-chapter X Files fic, and the first that is not in second person! (Although I accidentally slipped into it a couple times while writing this, so if you catch an uncorrected pronoun, please let me know!)
> 
> Tagging this was a struggle because I don't want to give anything away hahaha. I tagged some characters that will appear in later chapters, and just kind of ignored extra tags. This is based very loosely on episode 2x20 of Supernatural, _What Is and What Never Should Be._
> 
> Enjoy:)

* * *

Now we will build you an endlessly upward world,

(reach in your pocket) embrace you for all you’re worth.

Is that wrong?  Isn’t this what you want?

Amen.

\-- Vienna Teng, _The Hymn of Acxiom_

* * *

 

He is woken up in a semi-strange living room by a sudden weight settling on his legs, and all at once, he opens his eyes and sits up to find a little girl giggling on his lap.  A stuffed elephant tucked under her right arm, she smiles from ear to ear.

“Uncle Fox!” she says, elongating his name into a simple, two-toned song.  “Tell me a story!”

For just a moment, he hesitates – and not only because it takes time to find a story that a child would find compelling.  There is also the fact that he can’t quite recall ever being called “Uncle Fox” in his life, can’t quite push aside the impression that he is seeing the girl in front of him for the very first time.

And yet, as he considers this, his mind supplies of its own accord that the girl’s name is Katherine.  All brown eyes and messy curls that frame her face, she is both familiar and foreign; foreign because the memories he has of her seem far away and hazy, but familiar because he knows with absolute certainty that her favorite color is pink, in spite of the fact that she will never wear it by choice.  She has had that raggedy stuffed elephant since the day she was born and refuses to sleep without it.  She is five years old.

And she loves stories.

Rubbing sleep out of his eyes with one hand, he wracks his mental repertoire of stories to find one.

“Alright, alright.  Let me think,” he starts, smiling as a sudden burst of creativity lends him a fully formed story, vivid in his mind’s eye.  “Okay, I got one.  Listen up, Kittie Kat.”

Kittie Kat.  The nickname, too, feels strange in his mouth as he says it, but he somehow knows her.  Distant memories of hearing himself use it spring to mind, moments where he had her propped up on his hip as she meowed into his collarbone, pretending.

Contented, he begins his story.

“Once upon a time, there was a man.  And a woman.  And they had two children: a little boy and a baby girl.”

“What were their names?” the interruption comes, and he thinks about it for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he admits.  “Do you want to give them some?  What were their names?”

“It’s _your_ story, Uncle Fox!”

And he concedes with a lighthearted sigh.  “Fine, fine, fine.  Names, alright….  Well, the dad’s name was… Woody.  And the mom’s name was Jessie.  The boy’s name was Andy and the girl’s name was Molly.”

“Hey, that’s _Toy Story!”_

“No it’s not!” he tries to say, feigning shock as she giggles.  “It’s my story!  And if you would let me _finish_ my story, Miss Kittie Kat…”

She quiets down and allows him to continue. .

“Now, when Molly was born, Andy decided that she was going to be his very best friend in the whole world.  But as they grew up, that wasn’t exactly true.  They played together sometimes, but Andy – he was kind of mean.  He would tease her and pull her hair and poke her elbows and mess up her drawings.  So Molly decided that she didn’t want an older brother anymore.  Before she want to bed one night, she made a wish on the brightest star in the sky that she could have a brand new family, even though her mommy and daddy – and even Andy – loved her very, very much.  Even if Andy wasn’t very good at showing it sometimes.”

“Did her wish come true?”

“I’m getting to it,” he insists.  “But you got it.  Her wish did come true – sort of, anyway.  The next morning, Jessie went to wake Molly up for school… but she was gone!  She disappeared, right out of her bed, and the whole family looked everywhere they could think of.  But they couldn’t find her.  You know why?”

Her wide-eyed silence suggests that she doesn't.

“Because the star she wished on that night wasn't really a star at all.  It was a spaceship – and Molly was abducted by aliens!”

“No way!” Katherine says, her mouth agape with five year old wonder.

“Yes way,” her Uncle Fox nods.  “But here's the thing:  the aliens that took her were super nice.  They were kind of like a new family.  They took her all around the galaxy in their ship, showed her the moon, every star in the sky, Mars, Jupiter, you name it.  They took her right up to the edge of the universe!”

“Wow!”

He chuckles.  “Wow is right.  But eventually – after a few days of fun – Molly decided that she wanted to go home.  Space was exciting… but I think she missed her mom’s hugs, and her dad’s macaroni and cheese.  She even missed getting teased by Andy, just a little bit.  So she went home, where Jessie gave her a million hugs and Woody cooked all her favorite foods for dinner because they missed her so much.  And Andy?  He missed Molly so much that he decided he would never tease her or poke her elbows or pull her hair ever again.”

“So Andy was always nice to Mollie?”

“Well,” he says, tipping his head to the side and offering a wide grin.  “Maybe not _always._ I’m sure he forgot once in a while.  But in the end, they all lived happily ever after.”

At that classic ending, Miss Kittie Kat smiles wide and wraps her arms around her uncle’s neck.  “I like that story!  Thanks Uncle Fox!”

And as she hurries away, her stuffed animal dangling from her hand as she goes, a voice speaks up from the doorway.

“I liked that story too.  Good one,” it says with a quiet laugh, and he turns himself around to find Katherine’s mother leaning against the doorjamb with a smile.  He sees her, with her brown hair pulled up into a bun, with her glasses on her head, with flour smacked across the leg of her pants, and for a moment he is speechless.  Breathless.

But then he pushes himself up off the couch and goes right on up to her and wraps his arms around her shoulders and squeezes for dear life, and he finds it in him to breathe again.

“Samantha,” he practically chokes, because all at once, his sister is the most beautiful sight he’s seen in a long, long time.

But although she returns his embrace, although she brings her arms around him in turn, he feels the hesitation. 

“Fox?” she asks, starting to pull away – but he has no intention of letting her go any time soon.  “Are you okay?”

He waits a moment before finally loosening up, leaning back.  His hands find their way to her shoulders and he just stares at her, incredulous.

Why?

“I, uh…” he has to think about it.  Has to think about why his sister is suddenly so special, so much closer to his heart than she has ever been, and he chalks it up to the world he saw when his eyes were closed.  A world where Samantha Mulder disappeared forever in 1973 and nothing was ever the same; a world full of monsters, where the government lied and people killed to keep secrets safe and there was never any Kittie Kat asking for stories with her stuffed elephant consistently by her side.

He lets out a pent up breath and finds an answer.

“Yeah,” he says.  “I’m great.”

So she smiles.  “Good.  Now come in here, give me a hand.”

She leads him into the kitchen, where she’s got an oven full of food, a cookie sheet with raw colored dough in various shapes, and a pot of soon-to-be boiling water on the stove.  On the counter, just under the microwave, there’s a radio quietly broadcasting this year’s selection of holiday music, and Samantha seems perfectly content to hum along with it as she moves busily from one task to the next.

Waiting patiently for some instruction, Fox Mulder considers why he’s here.

“Hey, Samantha,” he starts, and her name suddenly feels wonderful to say.  “Who’s coming today?”

Because it’s _Christmas._ He gathered that from the tree in the living room, just feet from where he woke up, so there _must_ be people coming.

She glances over at him for a moment before answering.  “Well… I mean it’s pretty much the same as last year.  You said Dana’s coming after dinner, right?”  He can’t quite recall exactly, but he believes it’s true, so he nods.  It makes perfect sense.  “Yeah, and other than that, it’s just you, me, Chris, Katherine, and Mom and Dad –”

“Mom and Dad?” he asks, and for more reasons than one.  In the year 2000, his parents are both alive – in stark, incredible contrast to the dream world he woke up from.  The image of his father lying dead in an unfamiliar bathroom flashes behind his eyes, along with a hazy half-memory of standing in the middle of his childhood home with coroners and police officers moving about, doing their jobs.  The distant weight in the pit of his stomach that must have come with the knowledge that he was the only one left.

Samantha is looking at him strangely now.  “Yeah, Mom and Dad.”

“And they…” he starts to wonder about the _and._ Because he’s thinking about it, trying to recall what his life has been like up until this point, but it is as if the memories are just out of his reach.  In itself, that should be terrifying – but he can’t bring himself to feel anything but calm and content.

Are his parents still married?  In a world where Samantha was never taken away – in a world without a Syndicate, without wide, all-compassing lies.  He phrases the question differently.

“How long have they been…?” he asks with some nondescript gesture of the hand.  “You know….”

“Married?” the concern in Samantha’s voice is not lost.

“Yeah, yeah.” 

“Forty-one years,” she answers without hesitation, and all at once he’s met with relief, happiness – and embarrassment, as her expression suggests that he should have known this.  He supposes that she’s not wrong in that regard.  “Don’t you remember?  Last year they were celebrating their fortieth, but you got stuck on a case and couldn’t make it.  Mom chewed me out for about an hour about it, like it was my fault, and you gave them a call later on?”

At her prompting, a distant memory of sitting in a car in the pouring rain, hearing his father’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Oh… yeah, they were – they were kind of mad, weren’t they?”

Samantha considers this as she dumps a box of spaghetti into the pot of water on the stove, and after a moment she shakes her head.  “Well… I don’t think they were really mad.  Just disappointed.  They want to see you for more than just holidays, Fox.”

“Yeah,” he sighs.  “I’ll have to… I’ll make more of an effort.”

They go silent as she continues to move around the kitchen; and while he knows how his next question must sound, he’s got to ask it.  Just one more thing to take stock of.

“Hey, do you know – you know a guy… he’d be around Dad’s age.  Smokes a lot?”

“Christopher Spender?”

He nods, and Samantha just stares at him for a few moments with her eyebrows creased in concern.

“Yeah… I know him,” she says, curt, as she sticks the cookie sheet onto the top rack in the oven.  And as soon as she’s finished with that, she walks back over to him and talks to him face to face.  “Fox, you know I know him.  You’re the one who told me why we don’t call him Uncle Christopher, and why he doesn’t come around anymore.  You _hate_ him.  Are you sure you’re alright?”

Perhaps to drive her message home, she gently presses the inside of her wrist to his forehead and, finding no fever, runs her fingers through his hair by the back of his head.

He lets her finish before he nods again, this time with his eyes cast down.

“Yeah, yeah,” he insists.  “I’m alright, I just… I just had a weird dream.  Just a little out of it….  Remind me?”

She seems unconvinced.  “Sure, I guess….  He was the reason Mom and Dad almost didn’t make it to forty-one.  I don’t really remember it, but Dad found out about the affair when I was eight and you were twelve… and when he found out Christopher was your real father, he nearly divorced Mom on the spot.  But in the end, they made up.  Dad told Christopher never to contact any of us ever again, and no one’s heard from him since.  You just hate him on principle.  I guess we all do.”

As soon as she says this, he remembers the night.  He remembers the yelling and screaming echoing through the house, effectively jolting him awake while Samantha slept in the next room over; he remembers being brave enough to venture downstairs, and then being subsequently grabbed by his father and shakily presented, almost as evidence.  Exhibit Fox Mulder. 

“That’s not something you’d forget.  Are you sure you didn’t hit your head or anything?  Take any medications?” she asks, and he shakes his head yet again.

“I’m sure.  Just a weird dream.”

“Alright.  Fine.”  Hesitantly, she goes back the pot of boiling water and gives the pasta a halfhearted stir.  After a few more moments of silence, she adds onto that concession. 

“You know – I know I’m not the one of us with the psychology degree,” she starts, “but if it would help… care to lay it on me?  Talk about it?”

A pause.  He shrugs.

“I guess… it was more or less the story I told Katherine… just… a little less child friendly,” he starts, and at her hum of acknowledgment, he continues.  “It was a completely different world.  A world where… you were abducted when we were kids.  I wouldn’t find out it was aliens until later on, but… Mom and Dad were dead, after being divorced for God knows how long.  And Dad, he – he’d been a part of this conspiracy.  This Syndicate that was working with the aliens, it was this whole… mess.  It was a mess.”

He takes a breath.

“I still worked with Scully.  And man… the things we’d see.  Incredible.  Terrifying.  I’d drive myself crazy looking for answers to everything, and I guess… I don’t know.  Now I guess things don’t… this all just doesn’t seem real.”

As he fades off into silence, Samantha nods her head from across the kitchen, where she stands next to the stove. 

“Well,” she says.  “All I can really say is that this is real.  And maybe that dream of yours… was just meant to make you realize how lucky you are.  Now, not to completely change the subject, but if you want to actually give me some help with Christmas here…”

She reaches for something on the counter and turns back to face him with a wooden spoon in hand and a calm smile on her face.

“You can take this real spoon and stir that real spaghetti for another minute or so before you strain it.”

There’s a feeling in the back of his mind that something, still, is not quite right.  He makes a mental note to follow up on it; but in the meantime, Fox Mulder beams.

“I’d be glad to.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/reviews would be lovely! <3 :)


End file.
